Archive for May, 2019

Source Han Mono Version 1.001 Update

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

The new open source Source Han Mono (源ノ等幅 in Japanese, 본모노 in Korean, 思源等宽 in Simplified Chinese, 思源等寬 in Traditional Chinese—Taiwan, and 思源等寬 香港 in Traditional Chinese—Hong Kong SAR) typeface was released only four days ago, and this article provides details about its 70-font Super OTC (OpenType/CFF Collection). This article simply serves as an announcement for the Version 1.001 update that was released today. There are two main changes about which users should be aware:

  • The alignment zones and hinting parameters for the FDArray elements whose glyphs were derived from Source Code Pro were improved. Many thanks to Twitter user @KiYugadgeter for raising this issue here, and for confirming the fix here.
  • Our designer, Ryoko Nishizuka (西塚涼子), opted to improve the glyphs for the half-width katakana (半角片仮名) that were expanded to have 667-unit horizontal advances via anisotropic techniques. The image above shows glyphs from Source Han Sans, then from Source Han Mono Version 1.000, and then from Source Han Mono Version 1.001.

I also updated the 143-font Source Han Mega OTC and 216-font Ultra OTC in the Source Han & Noto CJK Mega/Ultra OTCs project earlier today.

Enjoy!

🐡

To UVS, Or Not To UVS

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (2)

Several months ago I updated the Adobe-Japan1-UCS2 “ToUnicode” mapping file in the open source Mapping Resources for PDF project specifically to accommodate the two Adobe-Japan1-7 CIDs, CIDs 23058 and 23059.

However, that ToUnicode mapping file is long overdue for a rather extensive update for other reasons, and part of the delay was intentional on my part. The purpose of this article is to outline the reason for the delay, along with providing more concrete update plans.
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Source Han Mono Version 1.000 Technical Nuggets

Posted on May 26, 2019 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

As the readership of this blog should know, I updated the Source Han Sans and Noto Sans CJK fonts to Version 2.001 early last month, mainly to accommodate the glyphs for U+32FF ㋿ SQUARE ERA NAME REIWA, which is the two-ideograph square ligature form of Japan’s new era, Reiwa (令和), that began on 2019-05-01. I then seized the opportunity to update our corporate Adobe Clean Han typeface family, to bring it into alignment with Source Han Sans Version 2.001. The updated Adobe Clean Han fonts are now being served to this blog.

I then decided to embark on a somewhat ambitious project to develop a new open source typeface named Source Han Mono, which is best described as a Pan-CJK version of Source Han Code JP, first developed four years ago by my esteemed colleague in our Tōkyō office, Masataka Hattori (服部正貴). You can read the background here. This effectively closes Issue #2 in the Source Han Code JP project.

Source Han Mono is a derivative typeface design of Source Han Sans, designed by my colleague Ryoko Nishizuka (西塚涼子), and Source Code Pro, designed by my colleague Paul D. Hunt. Its localized names are 源ノ等幅 (Japanese), 본모노 (Korean), 思源等宽 (Simplified Chinese), 思源等寬 (Traditional Chinese—Taiwan), and 思源等寬 香港 (Traditional Chinese—Hong Kong SAR). (As an aside, the reason why the Traditional Chinese—Hong Kong SAR name, 思源等寬 香港, appears correctly is due to the updated Adobe Clean Han fonts. This benefitted the glyphs for U+7B49 等 and U+9999 香.)

This article will detail some of the challenges that I faced, along with some of the decisions that I made, while developing this new Pan-CJK typeface family.
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Adobe Clean Han Version 2.001

Posted on May 21, 2019 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

The recent Source Han Sans Version 2.001 update provided to me an excellent opportunity to bring Adobe Clean Han, Adobe’s corporate Pan-CJK typeface, into alignment. I am pleased to announce that, as of yesterday, the updated Adobe Clean Han fonts are now being served to this blog via Adobe Fonts.

To celebrate this significant update, I decided that it would be appropriate to illustrate—using live text that can be easily copied and repurposed elsewhere—the 68 ideographs that include five separate glyphs, one for each of the five supported regions/languages:

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Simplified Chinese
傑僭割劘匾叟喝塌姿嬴幰廋扇扉搨摩榻溲潛瀛瘦瞎磨窖竇箭篠簉糙綢纛羸翁翦翩肓臝艘花裯褐謁譖豁贏轄返迷途造週遍遭選遼鄰釁閼雕靠靡颼飯驎鬣魔麗麟

Adobe Blank VF & Friends

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

I spent the last couple of weeks developing a Variable Font version of the infamous Adobe Blank, and the open source project, named Adobe Blank VF & Friends, was released yesterday evening. But, before I detail what makes the Variable Font versions special, besides being Variable Fonts, let’s briefly go over the history of Adobe Blank and Adobe Blank 2.

Adobe Blank

First released in 2013 as open source, Adobe Blank simply maps all 1,111,998 Unicode code points to non-spacing and non-marking glyphs. What made the project interesting for me was to find the right balance between the number of glyphs and the size of the 'cmap' table. When mapping over a million code points, this becomes a valid concern. After some experimentation, I found that 2,049 glyphs was the sweet spot that resulted in 'CFF ' and 'cmap' tables of a relatively small size.

Adobe Blank 2

Adobe Blank 2, which was first released in 2015, is a two-glyph version of Adobe Blank that includes a Format 13 (Many-to-one range mappings) 'cmap' subtable that maps all 1,111,998 Unicode code points to GID+1. At the time, there was no convenient way to create a Format 13 subtable, so I used ttx, and supplied the actual hex values of the compiled subtable. The current version of ttx can successfully compile a Format 13 subtable by explicitly specifying all 1,111,998 mappings.

That then brings us to the Variable Font versions…
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